


Undying, Death-Defying

by AsbestosMouth



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: All hail Roosifer!, Appalling poetry, Demons and Witches Alive Alive-o!, F/F, F/M, Facts about ducks are wrong, Fluff and Humor, For actual reasons and not just because he can be, Halloween, M/M, Only wetter, Please microchip your Hellhound, Shirtless Sandor throughout, So that's what Jon did when he died?, Wales is like the Hellmouth, it's just a bit silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-20
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-08-23 12:21:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8327629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsbestosMouth/pseuds/AsbestosMouth
Summary: Abersalem. It's just a small Welsh village. Wet, Grey. The usual. Apart from the inhabitants. Sandor doesn't mind, because he fits in a whole lot better; living in Wales is marginally better than hanging around the Realm of the Stranger like most demons tend to do. After all, everyone else in Abersalem isn't quite human, either. His next door neighbour is technically dead. A lesbian selkie and her dragon girlfriend run the local flower shop. Every month, they sacrifice a goat curry to Roosifer, who married a mother-goddess. It's that sort of place.And then there's Sansa. Who might be more human than the rest of them, but you know what they say about redheaded witches, don't you? No. Probably you don't. But it's really complimentary.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hardlyfatal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hardlyfatal/gifts).



> I did a more serious Hallowe'en ghost fic, which wasn't supposed to turn out like that, so I thought I best write the one I promised @hardlyfatal. This is Pratchetty, with a nod towards _Top Gear_ in regards to ducks, and who ever thought I'd have to write that in a notes for a fanfic?
> 
> Title, and the song used at the end, is _The Power of Love_ , by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

* * *

 

 

Abersalem.

 

It isn’t much, but it is home.

 

Other villages nestle in comfortable valleys, snug and sensible and away from all that ridiculous Welsh weather that consists of ninety percent rain, and ten percent slightly heavier rain. Abersalem is stubborn. Abersalem is a bit mad. Abersalem wobbles precariously upon a mountaintop, overlooking the long silver reservoir that people occasionally poke with a stick and wonder if the dead bodies have risen yet.

 

People don’t lock their doors in Abersalem. There’s no point. Why have the hassle of replacing it when someone just sets fire or takes a hatchet to it, makes a nice cup of tea, and possibly ‘borrows’ one of the ancient eldritch relics that everyone tends to have sitting atop their mantelpieces?

 

Visitors don’t come to Abersalem. Apparently, once you’re there, you’ll never leave. Not because it is a charming slice of Welsh life, complete with adorable tea shops/bakeries called _ Y Popty  _ that serve Welsh cakes and bara brith, or rustic pink-cheeked locals filled with stories about how Anthony Hopkins based his representation of Hannibal Lecter on the son of the local lord, or. Actually. The last one might be true. Ramsay’s quite proud of that. But no. People don’t holiday in Abersalem. They have more sense than that.

 

The residents of Abersalem sometimes speak Welsh. Sometimes they speak some sort of language that only Elder Gods with tentacles understand, which to outsiders could actually still be Welsh. Both involve large amounts of phlegm. One or two of them converse in Latin, but that’s because they’re pompous idiots with massive superiority complexes who think they’re better than everyone else.

 

To be perfectly honest, they are. At least Willas is. Oberyn’s a bit dodgy, but that’s incubi for you. Willas was human, once. Then Abersalem happened. Now he’s vaguely elfy around the ears, and giggles too much.

 

It’s happened to a number of people over the years, has Abersalem.

 

* * *

 

“Daddy! Dad! Dadddddddddy! DadDadDad!”

 

“Fuck’s sake, dog,” growls the man who wears nothing but tight-fitting black denim jeans and big boots. He’d wear a shirt, or a nice knitted jumper that the young witch he’s in love with made for him, but his vast leathery wings keep popping out at inopportune moments and ruining any piece of clothing above the waist.

 

According to most of Abersalem, the views about the village are lovely, but not quite as lovely as Sandor’s naked torso. If anyone decided to come up with a guided tour to the place, visiting Sandor’s chest would be third on the list after sacrificing the usual goat curry to Roosifer, and having a drink in the local pub, _ The Slaughtered Dragon _ . Davos, the landlord, has a detachable hand that provides table service. Apparently some lunatic with a fire fetish wanted to cut his fingers off for thievery or something, but missed a bit.

 

Husbands, eh? Who’d have them?

 

The other two heads join the chorus, Stranger circles, drooling from his three dripping gaping maws that promise death, the Underworld, and many many loving licks to his favourite people. Considering the beast is a Hellhound, he’s not good at being evil (apart from his rightmost head. That one is quite nefarious).

 

No dogs are evil - even ones born in the darkest reaches of the Kingdom of the Damned. If you want a demonic pet these days, just go and get a cat. Cerberus (Cerberii? No one is quite sure) are useless.

 

“Walkies!”

 

“Play?”

 

“FEED ME,” rumbles the smallest, angriest of the heads, snapping peevishly at the other two. Walkies head and Play head grumble back, and for a moment it seems as if Stranger is about to attack himself.

 

This happens less often than you’d think.

 

“FEED ME, DADDY.”

 

“Walkies! Walkies, Daddy!”

 

“Play? Play!” Play head can only say one word, but he utters it enough to make up for his lack of vocabulary with sheer annoyance. “Playplayplayplay-”

 

“SILENCE, WORM.”

 

“Play!”

 

Angry head gives Sandor the sort of look that someone with a very short temper gives to someone that is about to witness them murdering someone else.

 

At least Walkies head is in the middle, between the idiocy of Play head and the bloodymindedness of Angry head. When you have to rely on Walkies being the sensible one, you know things are quite fucked up.

 

“Bloody hells, dog. Sit.”

 

The massively muscular and doom-black back end thumps to the floor, tail wriggling with promise. Clegane rummages in an untidy kitchen drawer, locates three Bonios - the issue with having a dog with three heads is having to multiple everything - and asks for paw.

 

Paw is given. Stranger is very good at paw. It’s his thing.

 

“Good boys.”

 

“Daaa-” Bonios are given before the cacophony can re-emerge, and all that can be heard is the contented crunching of a happy hound.

 

Not that one. The Hound is never truly happy. It’s in his job description.

 

Avuncular and demon does not go. Sure, some manage to carry it off. Some cultivate a carefully nurtured sense of amusement, and cheer, and all-round happiness.

 

Clegane is not one of those demons.

 

He is six and a half feet of ill-repressed ire who can just about get away with looking human most of the time if he remembers to a) keep the wings tucked in and b) not do that odd thing with his eyes and tongue. It takes concentration to keep his pupils steel-grey and to not naturally bifurcate anything. According to Oberyn, who is a fucking bastard who tries to seduce everyone and, get this, usually succeeds, the bifurcated tongue is amazing for sex.

 

There are few demons who live outside of the Seven Hells. Most prefer the comforts and the warmth of the Nether Realms, the twenty eight days paid holiday a year the Stranger gives them, and the truly excellent pension that is due to be paid out come the Apocalypse. For many, it’s all they’ve ever known. They were conceived out of the ether in the Plains Beneath Everything, in the Living Darkness, and, it’s a great place if you’re up for that sort of thing. It’s run rather well, even if Roosifer tries to usurp the Stranger on a regular basis and gets banished, time after time, back to Wales to lurk with intent rather than stalk the Halls of the Damned.

 

Sandor is different. Why? Because he’s Sandor.

 

Fire is the only thing that terrifies him.

 

The reason for this is because his brother took a flaming sword to Sandor’s face during the whole angel/demon war thing six thousand years before. Ironically, they were supposed to be on the same side, but Gregor - who got a fucking calendar named after him, the fucker, as well as a shitload of chants - obviously thought his little angel brother was about to go all Stranger on him and whack. Burning blade right to the head.

 

So, fuck him. Sandor went all Stranger on him and, since the Old Gods thought he was going going to Fall anyway, Fell.

 

The irony of Gregor being an Archangel and Sandor being, well, Sandor, still hurts. Gregor hangs around with Michael and smites the wicked. Or, at least, just smites whoever he can get his enormous smitey hands on, wicked or not. He’s a very enthusiastic smiter, who really should be batting for the other side. Not like that, but, as everyone knows, it is best to hold the leash of something that may try and kill you rather than drop it and know your days are numbered.

 

The Old Gods hate being smote, so decided to give Gregor an outlet for his murderous madness rather than let him Fall and be claimed by the Stranger. Amusing, really. The most evil being in the universe is an Archangel.

 

Cunt.

 

Fire is also why he doesn’t live in the Realm of the Stranger. It’s quite flamey down there. He stuck it out for about four and a half thousand years, before finally giving in and demanding a transfer to the surface. Ended up right in the middle of the Fall of Rome, surrounded by Ostrogoths, and craving a sandwich that ended up not being invented for another eighteen hundred years.

 

The Stranger’s a decent sort, if you look past the death fetish, the whole King of the Fallen, Lord of the Damned, Eater of Souls part. He’s fucking pretty, and smiles rather nicely, and blushes when you ask about his boyfriend. Some say he’s actually a human who defied the laws of death and usurped the Throne from the original Emperor of the Pit. Some say he knows two facts about ducks, and both of them are wrong.

 

All we know is he’s called Jon Snow.

 

The boyfriend is definitely an angel. He tries to do the whole dress in black, be cool thing, but Sam is apple-cheeked, and rosy tinted, and his wings are embarrassingly white and fluffy. He looks after orphaned imps, and soothes the brows of the damned. Makes tea. Bakes for the office. The usual perfect trophy wife, if that described a plump and overly-enthusiastic bookworm who seems out of his depth in this arena of the dead.

 

Alright people, though. Sandor’s been for dinner with them twice, and once they had the vegetarian option as apparently the ritually slaughtered calf had been adopted by Sam. He’s called it Kevin.

 

Three collars are buckled about three necks. They all differ, for each head is, in reality, an entity of its own. Walkies, the nearest to an actual dog, prefers a nice English saddle leather that Sandor bought off the internet. It’s padded, and a warm brown with neat stitching. The tag mentions that Stranger is microchipped, and if found, please ring this number. Play likes glitter, because he has the attention span of a gnat with a slight head injury, and loves purple because it’s shiny. It is the gayest thing he’s ever bought, mostly because Sandor had to ask Varys if he could borrow that that special catalogue that he has delivered every three months.

 

Varys is human. Surprisingly. Everyone expects him to be something else, but he’s resolutely normal. Not really. In the grander scheme of things, he’s really weird, but compared to most of the denizens of Abersalem, being human is a sign of boring non-diversity.

 

Angry goes for the full leather fetish experience, with studs, and flames, and chrome.

 

Demons and other supernatural beings are sometimes renowned for their lack of dress sense. Most manage to carry off ‘stylish’, with elan if you would, but sometimes  _ things _ creep in. A touch of patent leather here; perhaps in the shape of a brogue. Maybe some studs on a belt. Perhaps a discreet nipple piercing. However, that tends to be the start of a hugely slippery, very sharply-angled slope. One moment it’s just a touch of edginess, the next? Looking like a MySpace victim circa 2007 (Theon), or a leather daddy (Drogo), or full on Victorian sentimental goth (Melisandre).

 

Walkies pants cheerfully, laves Sandor’s fingers with his massive duvet-like tongue, while the other two heads sulk. Play throws pathetic puppy-eyes at his Daddy, whimpers as if he’s dying. Angry stares.

 

Angry would make an excellent cat.

 

Clipping on the harness is easier than it should be. Despite the multi-headed approach, the body of Stranger is a solid lump of well-behaved Mastiff-type beast. Luckily he can get all doggy  _ accoutrements _ from the usual pet shops in the nearest large town, though he does get odd looks.

 

“Three large dogs?” they ask, every time, as he piles huge bags of the best quality dog food, and many squeaky toys in various amusing shapes, and Play’s favourite fluffy pheasant that gets inadvertently destroyed in an excited frenzy when the play word is said.

 

“English cross Neapolitan mastiffs,” he says, and when people ask about Stranger, it is possibly the only time Sandor ever manages a proper smile.

 

“Wow, they must be enormous,” the girl always replies, her gaze somewhere on Sandor’s vast and impressive chest that he clothes for occasions such as this. “Like, totally huge. But you’re so big, and strong, and-”

 

Humans don’t tend to notice his face. He’s that tall, and that what they keep calling built, that they lapse into some sort of babbling appreciation, or just go silent and stare at his nipples. Compared to the rest of his community, Sandor is an ugly bastard. After all, demons are fallen angels who are still just as beautiful. They tend towards the vainglorious, and sinful. Not that sins are seen as terrible - more like guidelines towards a happily productive, moderately naughty lifestyle. Most of them haven’t had their brother try and remove their head with an Old God sanctioned blazing weapon of death.

 

Ugly/sexy Oberyn calls him, as the randy bugger tries to get Sandor into bed with him and Willas for the eighth time.

 

“How do you deal with Oberyn fucking everything that moves?” he asked the elf-eared man one day.

 

“Join in.” A smile, and it is still rather sweet, but, like power, Oberyn corrupts absolutely. They’ve never quite been able to explain the ears, but Martell shagging powers account for the lack of blushing and the difficulty in sitting down half the time. Before he became whatever he is, Willas was an innocent. Obviously that’s what tempted Oberyn. Demons are supposed to bring humans to the dark side, not get sidetracked by random hot twenty-something aristocrats with the sort of cheekbones that could slice cheese and a sideline in Hugh Grant style rambling.

 

They sort of met in the middle, compromised, and went from there.

 

* * *

“Morning, Sandy.” 

 

“Fuck off, Dondarrion.”

 

His next door neighbour, the nearest he’s got to a friend and that’s only because Beric won’t leave him alone, smiles in his perfectly benign way.

 

“How’s the big lad? How’s my big beautiful boy?” The first time Beric said that, Sandor wasn’t sure if the man meant Clegane or Stranger; it turned out to be the dog. Dondarrion leaves his seat - it’s a nice bistro set, neatly painted, well maintained - and his cup of tea, comes over, scritches the heads. Angry, still sulking, ignores the loving hands, but Walkies and Play squirm, panting happily, nosing for more.

 

“Angry having a grump?”

 

“He wanted food, and he knows he doesn’t get fed until we’ve walked.”

 

“Reminds me of Ramsay.”

 

“...don’t fucking say that, for fuck’s sake. I like my fucking dog, you fucker, and I don’t like your pet vampire.”

 

“Instant gratification,” Beric counts off on his fingers. “Wants what he wants, and doesn’t care about anything else. The usual strange dress sense. Sulky and murderous half the time. He’s definitely Ramsayesque.”

 

“Fuck off. He’s not the Son of Roosifer.”

 

“No,” Beric murmurs, a light glittering in his dead golden eyes and he’s definitely not in the same conversation. It happens. He’s dead, after all. The memory wanders. “He’s a very very naughty boy.”

 

“Who?”

 

“Oh. Sorry. Ramsay, not Angry. He’s a bit tied up at the moment.”

 

“For fuck’s sake, you corpsey bastard!”

 

“Not out here, terrorising his neighbourhood though, is he?”

 

Their weird bondage games have some positive effect. Since Beric showed up, and since Ramsay can’t kill him - he tries, but zombies are really bloody resilient, even when set on fire, melted in acid baths, stabbed ninety three times, hung drawn and quartered, weighed down and thrown in the reservoir, impaled, garotted, beheaded, defenestrated, and possibly fucked to another sort of death - Bolton has calmed down a little. There’s fewer bodies in the lake. People don’t report him skulking hopefully and murderously in rose bushes any more. Ramsay doesn’t go to war with the Starks, who live dramatically in a ruined castle just down the lane and turn into wolves every full moon, just because he’s bored.

 

He gets all his frustrations out on the one person who refuses to pop their clogs. Beric admitted that he could die if he wanted to, but it’s far more amusing watching Ramsay beat himself into submission against a brick wall of being unable to murder someone for once, and anyway, he enjoys the sex and the company.

 

“Give you that, I suppose.”

 

“I’ve made far too much lasagne, by the way. Shall I bring you a dish round for dinner? Or would you like to come over, and we can watch the rugby?”

 

Temptation.

 

“...will Ramsay be there?”

 

“No, it’s his yoga class tonight.”

 

Sandor just stares.

 

“We need him bendier. Some of our positions are-”

 

“...fuck’s sake.”

 

* * *

 

The rain lets up, just a little, turning into that fine mist spray that makes everything damp but not sopping wet. It’s not too bad, and Sandor is used to wandering around without his shirt on, rivulets of water trailing through dark chest hair, caressing the muscles that shift in his broad strong back, soaking his jeans so they cling to his thighs and backside. Him, his dog, the rain. It’s a refreshing thing, and he pads through puddles, spatters through mud, taking his usual route.

 

Past Varys’  _ Emporium  _ and Dany’s flower shop. Yara, selkie and sulky in turn, nods her usual greeting.

 

“Wet enough, Cleggers?”

 

“There’s a fucking innuendo there, isn’t there?”

 

The woman grins, all short sleek hair and glistening skin. “You know I love it soaking, mate.”

 

Over her shoulder, Daenerys shakes her head, her long horns curling back from her delicate boned face. If there is a de facto ruler, apart from Roosifer, it is her. Never piss off the female dragon. She’s never eaten anyone. Not yet. There’s always that first time, that threat of when will she go Targaryen on the village and either start a hoard in the middle of the chapel, or decide that the tiny people look so very yummy and tasty.

 

“Flowers for your sweetheart, Clegane?” She holds blue roses in her clawed hand, silver scales racing under the filmy sleeves of her diaphanous blue gown. “I shall put them on tab, if you wish?”

 

Shit.

 

“Yeah. Alright.”

 

Daenerys wraps them carefully, smiles with her faintly dangerous looking teeth hidden behind her lips.

 

“When are you two getting together, Cleggers? I’m sick of you both wandering around like lost little hellhound puppies, all heartsick and pathetic. Just shag the woman already.”

 

The young man with the very green eyes, and ears that are rather like Willas’, materialises from another dimension next to Sandor and opens his mouth, wanting to say something.

 

“Mouth fucking shut, Reed.”

 

“I am but a Cassandra in a realm of unbelievers,” Jojen sighs, disappearing again in a faint suggestion of fae dust. He does that. Ramsay Bolton is creepy. Jojen Reed is creepier. At least Ramsay doesn’t curl into your shoulder and tell you the date of your death. Unless, obviously that date is today and Bolton’s promising to cut your throat in the next five seconds because he fancies a quick snack.

 

“Margaery wanted me to ask him about Willas’ ears.” The Tyrell family supplies the flowers to the florist shop, that being the reason Willas appeared in Abersalem and never left. Sometimes he sings _ Hotel California _ very softly to himself, substituting the lyrics about dark desert highways and the like for things that are more unmistakably Welsh, before Oberyn swoops once more and reminds Tyrell of the reason for Remain rather than Aberexit.

 

“Go get her, you big scarred bastard,” Yara tells him, slapping him hard on his shoulder. She’s strong as hells, and the smack stings, but Sandor is far too embarrassed to admit that so shrugs, nods, wanders away with the flowers in his hand, Stranger’s lead in the other, up and up, through the winding streets.

 

* * *

 

“Lady? Please get down from there?”

 

Cats! Gah!

 

In another world, Sansa Stark would, like her brothers and sister, be a werewolf. She takes after her mother - a most accomplished Witch of the Water - and therefore lives, maid-like (not mother, not crone, not yet), in that little bubble of the supernatural where she looks, for all intents and purposes, completely human.

 

Because she is. Mostly.

 

Witches are humans with powers that tap beyond the mundane and plug, very USB-like, into the ether of the Beyond. It comes with some perks; wider social circle, vast knowledge of strange things, animal familiars, tumbledown yet romantic cottages that sometimes glow with magicks beyond mundane comprehension, enhanced life span that often tends towards the possibly immortal like Melisandre.

 

There are always Three. The maid, Sansa, is pure and untouched, or, at least, takes sensible precautions with moon tea and condoms. The mother, her mother, remains with the Stark wolves in the ancestral home and takes humans on guided tours of the old pile. Wolf’s Castle now owned by the National Trust, but the family still lives in the more inhabitable wing. There’s a lovely tea room, and everything. The crone, Melisandre. She’s been through maiden, obviously motherhood somewhere, and without her customary glamour that makes her look like a really gorgeous thirty year old, she’s in need of a decent bra and some support knickers.

 

It’s a redhead thing, is witchcraft.

 

Bran is a little witchy, but then he’s a little everything. Overachiever, is Bran. He’s a green seer, and a werewolf and a raven (how that works, they don’t know, but it just does), and he’s the sort of teenage boy that everyone hates because he’s so good at everything, but secretly like because he’s super weird and that’s quite cool.

 

Also he talks to the fae, introduced Meera to Uncle Benjen, and the wedding was lovely.

 

Sansa was a bridesmaid. 

 

Not that she’s jealous of Bran, or Arya for being basically a super soldier alpha wolf, or Robb for being her Mum’s favourite, or Rickon for being the youngest. Sansa’s the oldest girl, she’s the one most like Catelyn; she even looks like her! Of course that means dealing with creepy Uncle Petyr, but last time he tried to kiss her, Sansa gave him magical pox.

 

Apparently, his penis turned a funny colour.

 

She even wrote a song about it on her ukulele.

 

 

_ Don’t you go near Uncle Petyr, _

_ Don’t you touch that gropey cur -  _

_ His touch is crawly,  _

_ Now he’s poorly, _

_ For I have cursed the fondling ser. _

 

_ I have turned his thingy emerald, _

_ The greenest sight that’s e’er been seen. _

_ I gave him the pox, _

_ And now his cock’s _

_ Resembling a rotting spleen. _

 

 

It isn’t her best work, but the meaning is there.

 

Lady stares back, all big green eyes and butter-wouldn’t-melt innocence.

 

Everything was far easier in Sansa’s life before she became a witch. Puberty happened, and her magic didn’t come in, so they all thought the wolf curse and the sourcery skipped a generation, but on her sixteenth birthday she accidentally turned her birthday cake into a slithering tentacled hellbeast - Oberyn wasn’t allowed to keep it - and that was that.

 

The next day she moved out, for witches can’t live together as they can create accidental cosmic chaos and bring about the destruction of the world as we know it viz. the Apocalypse, to this sweet little cottage.

 

It took three weeks to evict the spiders, scrub, paint, make everything far more cheerful. Witches tend to have a certain, what shall we call it? A certain style. Dark. Dramatic. Some go the fingerless lace gloves and cleavage route, like Melisandre. Mother prefers sensible dresses, sturdy walking boots, and a big stick. Sansa never found herself fitting into anything like that. No tragic romantic draped in velvets and corsets. No leather-clad almost succubus ideal, designed to ensnare. Sex magic isn’t her thing. Not even the stereotype of striped socks, cosmetically applied warts, and broomsticks appealed.

 

The black cat is  _ de rigueur _ though. That’s non-negotiable.

 

“Lady, please come out of the chimney?”

 

A mew that sounds very much like swearing reverberates through soot and brick.

 

Oh. Bugger.

 

“Fine, I’ll leave you there. See if I care.”

 

She smooths the wide skirts of her dress, flops onto the hearth rug like Scarlet O’Hara, scowls at the mantelpiece.

 

Sansa’s aesthetic is vintage 1950s. She is petticoats, and heels, and polka dots. Not rockabilly, though she does own, thrillingly, a leather jacket that belonged to Robb, and she once rode a motorbike as Mr. Dondarrion gave her a lift into Haverfordwest because she desperately needed fabric, and he’s such a lovely gentleman who always asks how the family are, and if she’s well, and how Lady is.

 

She’s Cath Kidston bags, and cream kitchen cupboards with rustic wooden chopping boards. Artfully distressed painted furniture in pale colours. Teal nail varnish and pretty lipsticks. Bunting, mismatched and adorable crockery for high tea, and church fetes. According to Arya, she’s like a middle of the century housewife who has broken the chains of patriarchal domination through her own witchy powers, but understands that she can be feminist and enjoy cardigans with tiny pearl buttons on, at the same time.

 

Arya then just stares at her cardigan, smirks, and goes to stalk the pair of human men she wants. Arya has harem written all over her. She’s got Jaqen, the face changer, and Syrio, First Sword of the Second Circle of the Realm of the Stranger, who reminds Sansa of a slightly fiercer and more demonic Bob Ross. Now Gendry, who is of minotaur stock, and Podrick, who is apparently too pure for this world according to the Brienne, the Valkyrie that employs him, are on her ‘To Do’ list.

 

The knock at the door comes at a most inopportune time.

 

Oh. Bugger squared.

 

“Come in. It’s open.”

 

* * *

 

The great thing about having Stranger as a pet is that if he is tied up outside someone’s house, or a shop, or anything like that, no one in their right mind would try and steal him.

 

“Sansa.”

 

“Oh. Hello Sandor.”

 

She has soot on her nose. It is at once the most perfect and most sexually charged thing he’s ever seen. Maybe he should lick his thumb, clean the mark from Sansa’s perfect skin?

 

“I brought you something.”

 

She looks up at him, and Sandor senses she’s irked.

 

“What’s up, girl?”

 

“Lady’s in the chimney. Again.”

 

Right. Damsel in distress time. 

 

Bundling the blue Wolf’s Castle roses into Sansa’s beautiful cardigan-covered arms - she makes handknits look amazing - Sandor girds his considerable loins. Lady. Cat. Evil. Witch thing. He doesn’t understand witch things. Cats are mandatory, which seems fucking ridiculous, as witches aren’t inherently evil. Perhaps if they gave the women some sort of choice when it comes to pets, they wouldn’t be seen as nightmare crones designed to spread nefariousness amongst the general public. Sansa with a cute spaniel the same colour as her incredible hair could change the perception of her sisterhood. She could have a TV show about witchcraft, and crafting in general, and she could show her knitting and sewing, and charm everyone into loving her just as much as Sandor does.

 

“Want me to get her down?”

 

“Would you?” She touches his arm, almost shyly. Sansa is the one person in the village who manages to not stare, open mouthed, at how his pectoral muscles shift under his gleaming skin, or how where his jeans sit, upon those muscular hips, exposes a dark trail leading from his belly button under his belt and beyond.

 

Which is shit. Because of all the people in Abersalem, she’s the one he really wants to gawp.

 

“Last time she did this, I had to clean the entire house from top to bottom, and soot’s really awful to get to. It gets into all the fibres of everything, and I had to scrub.”

 

“Right.”

 

The chimney breast, one of those old-fashioned inglenooks, is snug around his shoulders but Sandor manages to maneuver himself into the narrow brick-lined gap with only a minor bump to the head. It is very dark, and very dusty, and the sneezing takes him not entirely by surprise.

 

“Are you okay in there?” Fingers touch his back. Sansa strokes his left  _ latissimus dorsi _ . He’d rather her have gone for the  _ gluteus maximus _ , but she’s not that sort of forward witch that many are. She’s a right classy little bird, is Sansa.

 

“Mmm. S’dark.”

 

She whispers something that sends tingles up his spine and almost makes him get a thoroughly unwanted hard-on, before the interior of the chimney brightens, just enough. The light is softly blue, silvery, and it makes Lady’s mean green eyes flicker alien-weird.

 

“I can see her.”

 

“Please be careful, she-”

 

Sandor makes a clumsy grab for the cat, who howls, hisses, claws fly, and then she’s firmly attached to his face.

 

“Fuck’s sake.”

 

“What’s wrong.”

 

“Cat’s on my fucking cunting head again.”

 

* * *

 

Lady licks an aristocratic paw, staring at Sansa as she carefully cleans soot from the puncture wounds neatly stabbing into the delicate flesh behind Sandor’s ears. Or, more accurately, one ear, since the other got, apparently, cut off by his psychotic sword-wielding angel big brother. 

 

No one else knows about Gregor.

 

She’s rather touched that Sandor trusts her with his big secret. The other ones - him being demonspawn, the fear of fire, how he’s not fond of tight spaces, secretly collects beer mats from all over the world, is quite good at pub quizzes - are known to those who are in a position to know i.e. the entire of Abersalem. This one though, of how, and why, and that Sandor is actually one of the original Fallen, that’s a biggie. That’s massive. That’s between him and Sansa.

 

“Sorry.” The liquid stings. It is no witchy brew, or cunning potion. Salt water’s the best thing for cat scratches; cleans everything out. “I’m almost finished. Will Stranger be fine outside?”

 

The man before her - and he’s half naked, and yes, Sansa does look but she was taught from a very young age that it is rude to stare, especially at huge and well-built demons who possess the sort of chest she wants to cling to, melt into, be protected by, and possibly lick, so she keeps her glances surreptitious and short - concentrates. For a moment his eyes transform from their usual human grey to slit-pupiled orange and yellow, then fade back to granite.

 

“Yeah. He’s good. Walkies is napping, Play’s found a beetle and thinks it’s very shiny. Angry’s eaten a wasp and it serves the grumpy bastard right.

 

“Will it hurt him?”

 

“Nah. He does it all the time. He’s the Wasp Murderer.”

 

Sansa smiles, because Sandor makes her want to. “He’s doing the world a service. I hate wasps.”

 

“Don’t tell him. He’ll get shitty and refuse to do it any more. Daft dog.”

 

“Thank you for my roses.”

 

He pauses, winces as she swipes one last time at a now disinfected wound. “S’alright.”

 

Sandor is good. It’s so odd, because he’s a demon, and not just any old denizen of the Nether Realm. He fell with the Stranger six thousand years before, and fought in  _ The War to End All Wars (Apart From the Apocalypse Which Will Just End Everything ™.) _ Sometimes she wonders if the Old Gods and the Seven got everything wrong, and it was supposed to be Gregor as the bat-winged devil and Sandor wielding the flaming sword of righteousness; it would make more sense. From what she knows, the Archangel takes pleasure in killing. He revels in slaughter, and blood, and bathes in the lamentations of the deceased. He is...unpleasant. Sandor? He’s killed, because that is what he is, but never enjoyed it. Never delighted.

 

“It’s Hallowe’en tomorrow.”

 

“Yeah. Fucking commercial bullshit bollocks.”

 

“There’s a dance at the chapel. Theon’s DJing.”

 

“Selkies. No music sense. It’ll be dance shit all night long, all that fucking awful ABBA and Nicki Minaj. Load of wank.”

 

“Sandor? Will you come with me? As my date?”

 

He freezes, licks his lips, as if he’s never been in such a position. 

 

“Do we have to dress up?”

 

“The theme is ‘human.’ It’s always human.”

 

“Dance and shit?”

 

Carefully, she lowers herself onto the settee, next to Sandor. Their thighs brush, and, wow, he really is so muscular. For a moment she finds herself transfixed by how tight the dark denim is at certain parts of his anatomy, and that tiny part of her mind that reminds her of Arya tells her that he’s just massive. All over. Especially there. Huge. Manly. Sandor’s the sort that could pick her up, steal her away, ravish her against a wall without putting her down or even expending that much energy.

 

How Sansa’d walk the next day is another, fascinating, matter.

 

“Not if you don’t want to, but I’d quite like to dance with you.”

 

He looks at her, and, oh bless him, he’s nervous. This six thousand year old demon, who could take out entire towns with his temper, who fought the Old Gods and lost, is apprehensive of her, little Sansa Stark, who is approximately five thousand nine hundred and seventy seven years younger than him, human, and could be snapped like a rotten twig if required.

 

“...alright.”

 

It’s so easy to lean in, brush his lips with hers, Sandor groaning against her mouth before he forgets himself, his wings explode from his shoulder blades. Of course they completely obliterate the cottage in a heartbeat.

 

“Shit.”

 

Sansa breathes in, absorbs the destruction that rains about them. He’s even managed to shatter the light bulb. It’s a little beyond her magicks to mend it after a long day, and, even better, a brilliant excuse for moving things forward a little less glacier-like.

 

“I can,” she suggests rather brightly, “come and stay at yours for the night? We can clean up tomorrow?”

* * *

 

“Ah, we are missing our beautiful Sansa.” Oberyn, who is wearing exactly what he wears on a daily basis - perfectly fitted trousers, tight shirt unbuttoned to his naval - leans against the wall of the chapel. Someone has gone mad with rolls of black and orange crepe paper, and pumpkins, and it looks for all purposes like the tacky human celebration they think so very quaint.

 

Davos’ hand scuttles over, bringing another glass of wine.

 

Yara, looking magnificently butch in a three piece suit, grins knowingly.

 

“You have gossip? Tell me, my friend?”

 

Around them the village enjoys itself; even Roosifer has deigned to bless them with his evil presence. He and Mrs. Bolton, a mouth-wateringly curvaceous mother goddess sort who has their demonic overlord by the balls by dint of being a) glorious and plush, like ripe strawberries and b) bakes deliciously, admire costumes. She looks like a Wagnerian wet dream, and he...well. Johnny Cash, the Man in Black, has nothing on Roose.

 

Dany and Willas chatter about flowers, their joint obsession. She cannot look human if she tries, but she’s attempted to make her scales and horns look as if they are accessories rather than part of her sinuous and most lovely body. Willas still owns his human clothes. He looks edible in a comfortable hand-knitted sweater and cord trousers, even if the ears are just a bit too exotic.

 

Oberyn likes those ears. They’re very sensitive. Making his lovely boy climax just by fellating the pointed elfy tip brings the old incubus a most delightful sense of smug pride.

 

In a dark corner, because that’s where they belong, Dondarrion and Bolton are drunk and mostly fucking.

 

He makes a mental note to investigate the corner when they are actually fucking, and see if they need any help.

 

“Her and Cleggers. Saw them come out of his house this morning.”

 

“How beautiful they must look. Her, so pale, so fragile, endless legs, hair the colour of autumn. Sandor, large and savage. A beast of a demon, full of wrath and devastation, tamed by her kiss. How well they fit together as he takes her. They grind, so desperate, his vast hands cupping her sweet breasts as he laves her rosebud nipples with that bifurcated tongue, his tattered wings surrounding them in sweat and leather. How sweet their climax-”

 

“Oby. You’re doing the incubus shit again.”

 

He grins, sharp-toothed, shameless. It is easy to read the minds of others, to drink the remnants of memories of sex. Oberyn stores them in his internal wank bank for the few times he takes matters into his own hands.

 

“D’you ever look at what me and Dany do?”

 

“Why? Should I?”

 

“Pervert.”

 

The heavy oaken door creaks as Clegane shoves it open. Sansa, in a black dress that displays her slender waist and shoulders, slips in under his arm. She’s found a witch hat, carries a tiny cauldron filled with sweets, and has drawn spiderwebs upon her pretty white skin with an eyeliner pencil. Apart from Willas, who was a most singular person before he turned into whatever he is now, she’s the nearest to a human they possess in Abersalem. Sansa embraces Hallowe'en as she did when a child. She revels in it.

 

Sandor trails her, almost meekly, as the witch places her sweet-laden plastic cooking pot upon the buffet table.

 

“My dearest Yara. I thought perhaps that Sandor wearing clothing would spoil the view.”

 

Oberyn takes in the motorcycle boots, the tight black leather trousers that cling to a magnificently muscular backside, the fitted black t-shirt with the v-neck that hints at chest hair and ridiculous strength, the short sleeves straining around biceps and shoulders. 

 

The arm tucked into the crook of Clegane’s elbow.

 

The kiss to that heroically scarred jawline, ruined by the Archangel and his blazing sword.

 

Some had to fall with Sandor; he didn’t plummet alone. Oberyn’s been there from the beginning - Lust, after all, is the Original Sin. It’s just that Lust is a really awkward name for banking details, and Starbucks coffee orders, so Oberyn it is.

 

Thankfully, given the space of the chapel and the lack of people surrounding them, Sandor’s little wing issue - and Oberyn posits that since the trousers are so tight, the only way the man can express his erection is with the leathery appendages ripping through cotton and waving around instead - doesn’t cause that much chaos. Someone applauds. Walda is always so enthusiastic about everything.

 

“Shit! Fuck’s sake.”

 

“It’s alright, Sandor. It’s fine.”

 

Sansa takes it in her stride. She just goes up on her toes and kisses the demon squarely upon his mouth. The wings shiver, as if connected to every nerve ending in his ridiculous body, and then they fold, wrap about them both, shielding and protecting as the the witch and the demon just sway, kiss, lost in the dreaming song with the perfect vocal performance that soars to the rafters.

 

“Will they ever come up for air? Pass the sick bucket,” Yara groans, dragging on her e-cig. She has the romantic airs of a butter knife.

 

“Circular breathing,” murmurs Oberyn, admiringly.

 

Oberyn can do that, too. He plays the didgeridoo. No euphemism.

 

* * *

 


	2. Undying, Bed-Defying Or: The One Where Sandor Trashes The Bedroom With His Slight Wing Problem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I completely forgot to update this fic with another chapter. Ergo, I'm an idiot. This takes place a good few months after Hallowe'een - let's say, oh, mid January, because that makes me look less of a forgetful numpty . Fluffy, slightly smutty.

* * *

 

 

“It is getting a little out of hand-” she points out rather gently.

 

Sandor grits his teeth, tries to turn, takes out an entire shelf of wolf-related knick-knacks with his left wing. He’s stranded and mostly unable to move, armed with a hard-on the size of the seven cantrefs of Dyfed, and Sansa - naked - seems to be caught between frantic giggling and mournful exclamation of the destruction, yet again, of their bedroom.

 

“Fucking wings!”

 

“Maybe therapy-?”

 

“You know who they send people like us to therapy with, woman?”

 

A shake of her pretty little head, hair teasing her nipples. The right wing shudders as his cock twitches, the leathery appendage flinging teddy bears about the chamber as if they’re possessed by the dead. Again.

 

Sandor swears in something rather more primal than English. Unfortunately such language tends to raise the Stranger himself, but as Jon’s on holiday somewhere appropriately gothic and miserable, they’re presumably free from his far too attractive face, general emo demeanour, and always present pet Tarly. Robb’s gone with them, to embrace his inner wolf or something, leaving Bran in charge of the Stark estates. Obviously it’s all gone hippy-shit and green seeresque, and with bloody Jojen Reed, who’s enough to creep any sensible demon out, Sandor’s told Sansa they’re not going over for their usual Sunday lunch.

 

Which means missing out on Cat’s roast potatoes. And that, ladies and gentleman, is a Sin.

 

Not a bad sin, like thrusting a burning sword into a brother’s face, or being unspeakably mean to puppies, or murder, but definitely up there with coveting a neighbour’s ass, and tiny amounts of armageddon. Cat Stark can cook like she’s made a pact with Snow. Considering their mutual dislike, that’s probably never happened.

 

“Who do you have to go to?” Sansa prompts, far too interested. She’s lived with the supernatural her entire life, but she still finds the workings of everything entirely fascinating. If anyone can romanticise it, she can. Hells, she thinks vampires are misunderstood and unfairly vilified, and the only one she knows is called fucking Ramsay Bolton. Sometimes Sandor thinks she’s far too head in the clouds for her own bloody good.

 

“Beric fucking Dondarrion.”

 

She blinks.

 

“He took a psychiatry degree after he died the last time. Priest thing. R’hllor shit.”

 

“I thought R’hllor was fire worship?”

 

“S’changed since Azor Ahai’s time. Worthless twat he was - stabbed his girlfriend to death and they named a fucking religion for him. Second millennium BC was fucked up, I swear. Darius the Great wasn’t bad though, liked his carvings. Shame about Marathon, but that’s bloody Greeks for you-” He stops himself before he launches into a sulk that’s been millennia in the making.

 

“These days it’s all fucking love, peace, and burning shit to purify it.”

 

Thinking about Dondarrion has at least meant his wings and cock aren’t as excited as they once were, and he manages to carefully shuffle between the blankets, snuggling into Sansa. Who moves, really rather unfairly.

 

“I’ve had an idea.” Sansa shifts, the mattress dipping, fumbling for something under the bed.

 

“…what idea?”

 

She beams, and is gorgeous, and fucking hells that itch between his shoulder blade intensifies. To stop the burgeoning erection/wing issues, Sandor thinks of Roosifer naked. It works, to a certain extent, but not even the Lord of Abersalem’s quivering pasty flesh - and for some reason he’s wearing a leather thong with metal spikes on the groin part - can fully quench the lust that he has for Sansa.

 

“Here.”

 

Several feet of rope. It’s nice rope. Not that shit nylon stuff that can chafe hands, but lovely soft rope like they have in Japan. When they tie the pretty girls in all sorts of knots, and everyone sees how bendy they are. Fuck, he thinks.“

 

Fuck,” he says.

 

“If you lie down, and spread your limbs?”

 

“What? But you in rope?!” Not exactly how he was picturing this going…

 

“No, not me. You.” Another of her cat that has the cream grins, lips closed over teeth, sending his tummy peculiar.

 

Sandor is a demon of the world. In the fifteenth century (and to be perfectly honest several other centuries, and especially in 1st century Rome) he ended up as a bouncer at a brothel. He’s just built that way. Even demons need to eat - one cannot live on bitter disappointment and seething hatred for ever, after all. Even if it is lemon-flavoured. He’s seen a thing or two in his six thousand years of the Fall, and rather a lot before all that unpleasantness (Michael is a pervert, obviously, and Gabriel? Well, let’s say Loras Tyrell is butch compared to the old poof) but having a very beautiful, very nubile, very cheerful witch wanting to lash him to her bed?

 

Well, it’s a change, but Sandor is flexible when it comes to Sansa. If she wants something, he gets it, does it, promises it, will do anything to please. He’s wrapped around her little finger, as Oberyn reminds him on a bi-weekly basis. Sandor’s not the type to be tied down, in more ways than one, but if Sansa wants to rope him to the bedframe like some sort of enormous sex toy, then he’ll bloody well hold his wrists and ankles in the right places and let her have her wicked way.

 

“Uh. Alright.”

 

“It’s an experiment,” she points out, needlessly.

 

“S’okay. I don’t mind if you want to do kinky shit.”

 

“It isn’t! It’s for the good of the bedroom. Do you know how long it’ll take for me to mend all my little wolf figurines? Hours and hours of magic.”

 

“I’d stick ‘em together, little bird, but my fucking sausage fingers-”

 

Which are amazing for the more sexual side of things - when he doesn’t destroy worlds with his wing hand ons, that is - but useless for things that need a little delicacy. Like sewing, for example; the last time Sandor tried to mend a tear in his jeans it took three days for him to get the balls to go and beg someone to cut him out of the bloody things. Thankfully the circulation returned after two weeks.

 

She gives him a look, and Sandor, meekly, allows his girlfriend to tie him up like a rambunctious steer. How Sansa got good at knots he doesn’t know. He wants to know, but that’s for another time.

 

“There.”

 

Shimmering naked, and sometimes he wonders if she’s part Mer considering her mother’s Tully blood, Sansa kisses him gently on the cheek, over scars.

 

“Now, you’re going to be very good for me, aren’t you, Sandor?” Her smile is what can only be described as ‘teasing.’

 

“Yeah. Fucking right I’ll be good for you.”

 

“And you’re going to do exactly what I need, aren’t you?”

 

“Right where you need it.”

 

Another kiss, dainty and sweet, lips warm and inviting against his own. Of course he gets hard. Of course his wings erupt from his shoulder blades and impale themselves through springs, and feathers, and the wooden slats of the bed base.

 

“What am I going to do with you?” she murmurs, light dancing in her lovely blue eyes.

 

“Anything.” Croaking. Like a fucking frog with a massive erection, desperate for some princess loving. Sod the bed. Fuck the wings. Sansa riding him like he’s some sort of enormous stallion. Somewhere Sandor’s aware that he does like his bestial similes for himself, but it makes him feel rather animal. Grr.

 

“I think-” Kissing his shoulder, over strong flesh, fingers trailing along the musculature of his belly and making his wings and cock quiver with hope. “I think- I’m going to go and have a lovely cup of tea, while you think about what you did to my porcelain wolf collection.”

 

“Woman!” She ignores the howl of frustration, the frantic wiggling, the quite hilarious sight of a six thousand year old demon being literally in thrall to the whims of a young witch. Erections, when attached to squirming irate people, tend to bob alarmingly. She pauses, clicks her fingers, and suddenly his penis is wearing a tricorn hat cunningly and magically fashioned from a pink post-it note.

 

“Damn you, you fucking red-haired siren!"

 

“I’ll see you later, Sandor.”

 

The door snicks gently behind her.

 

“You glorious maned she-devil! You Lilith of a witch!”

 

Silence.

 

Sandor rolls his shoulders, and stares at the ceiling. Even now his wings and cock remain stubbornly interested. Stranger on a fucking pogo stick.

 

Something tickles his chest, roaming across hair and solid definition, to gently caress his nipple. Straining his neck yields nothing to his gaze, so he puts it down to a very peculiar itch caused by his sexual hunger. Until, of course, the same thing happens to the other; twin touches, and a slight zingy scent of ozone, and…

 

He’ll kill her. He’ll have to have copious amounts of spectacular sex with her before hand, and possibly put a ring on her finger, and maybe have two children - a dark-haired and blue eyed girl, and a really fucking ginger boy with grey eyes, just to fuck with everyone who says that redheaded lads can’t be gorgeous, and since they’d be half-demon they’d be absolutely stunning even without Sansa as their mother, and twice as attractive as she would be - and they’d grow old together in whatever way they can. But after that, say, what, three hundred, four hundred years? He’d have to kill her. Gently. With kisses. And lots of sex.

 

“I know you’re doing that, woman!”

 

A giggle, Sansa peeping around the door. She has a spectacularly cute nose, he thinks, as the magical touch wanders purposefully down his stomach and wraps, with a hint of glitter, around his cock.

 

By the time she’s finished with him, the bed is reduced to splinters, and the entire room is coated with mattress feathers.

 

Sansa sighs theatrically, releasing him from the hitherto undamaged bedposts. “I’m going to have to be a lot stricter, aren’t I?”

 

“Yeah. Really strict.” Maybe in a secretary suit and her hair in a bun, with glasses on her adorable nose?

 

She steps through feathers, and Sandor whirls her around in a tornado of feathers, and kisses, and nakedness.

 

It’s surprising how comfortable love making can be when the mattress is destroyed and all you have to lie on is a downy blanket of white feathers and soft fabric. Tickles, too. In all the right places.

 

* * *

 


End file.
